Why this blog
The purpose of this blog is to create an awareness on the importance
of Email Marketing for Non-Profit Organizations (NPO),
and to guide you on how to leverage the benefits by way of effective email
marketing. Email marketing platforms enhances your marketing campaigns to build
relationships with volunteers, donors, etc. It supports your journey of
converting a contact to a donor and to retain the relationship to convert them
as regular donors for a long time.
This is going to be a series of two blogs to cover the topic
matter. In this first blog, I am going to address the importance of email
marketing and how NPOs can build the contacts lists effectively and keep
them engaged by way of sending regular newsletters. In my next blog, I’ll be
covering how to run the email campaign, analyze, improve and implement the best
practices so as to achieve your goals.
- Open rate – 30.85%
- Click-through rate – 3.60%
- Click-to-open rate – 11.67%
- Unsubscribe rate – 0.10%
Why Email marketing is essential for Non-profits?
First reason is that, everyone who uses internet for
communication will have an email id. Secondly, people prefer emails when it relates
to a brand, charity or information which is to be referred before making a
decision. A study made in 2018 by Adobe Annual Consumer Email Survey shows that
about 50% of people prefer email communication when dealing with brands. The
second preference is direct mail which is far below the comparison (only 20%).
One of the important reasons why email is preferred more
than social media or any other communication is that, it is controllable what
come to their inbox unlike social media feeds.
For Non-profits, email communication is much cheaper
and authentic way of reaching target audience. You can focus multiple campaigns
on potential donors who are likely to donate on a regular basis. By this method
your cost of campaigns will be much lesser and you don’t have to send mass
mailers to people who are not likely to be potential donors.
Benefits of Email Marketing for NPOs
Your organization’s key goals will be to reach new audience
by innovative techniques to build the list; to stay in touch and invite them for
volunteering, supporting & donating; to take them through the marketing
journey by sharing your projects that you run and enlighten them how they can
make a difference by their contribution.
How to build and increase your contacts list
Use the tools like Subscription Forms, Surveys, Landing Pages, Webinar, etc.
that are available in the Email Marketing Platform and leverage the benefits. Few
of the tools explained here for your reference.
Contact building and increasing the contact list is the primary
step, if you are starting from scratch. Always present the benefits of signing up for your newsletter, e.g.
that you’ll inform donors how their money is spent and what impact it has on
the cause.
Build a well-crafted landing page that is intuitive for
visitors make the preferred action (Call to action). This could be your story
or your project and how it will change life of many, etc. and should be a clear
call-to-action item.
Webinars should be a part of your email strategy. Once
potential donors register for your webinar, you can send them email sequences
before and after the event. A handy feature you should consider are on-demandwebinars. You can record live events and turn them into pre-recorded events
people can watch at their convenience.
How to create Newsletter Templates
Here we are going to discuss the proven method of creating
newsletters for your audience. These methods are based on the case studywith TechSoup Polska who have realized 1200% increase in order value in ayear. So, please understand that I’m not going to tell you a new method;
instead I’m going to tell you about the real success proven method that worked
out for them.
There are many aspects to be considered before designing an
email template since a well-designed email template is extremely important for
email marketing success. It is ideal to use the pre-designed templates and customized
based on your needs.
- Structure. Divide our content into sections to facilitate information comprehension.
- Consistency. Always use brand colors and utilize similar graphic elements.
- Clarity. Strive to keep our newsletters clean and not overloaded with content.
It’s important to adjust the messages to the target audience
group. Direct the specific content to selected recipient groups (e.g. we inform
users of Google for Nonprofits about Google Ad Grants training).
Here are a few pieces of advice from Liza Nema, ProjectCoordinator at TechSoup Polska, on how to prepare a professional newsletter template:
- Think about what kind of content you’ll be sending to your recipients.
- Choose a template.
- Customize the template according to your needs – use email editor to change the colors to be in line with your brand, add logos and other graphic elements.
- Add a call-to-action so that your recipients can perform the desired action: donate money, sign up for an event, etc.
- Before you send your newsletter, check its preview for desktop and mobile devices. Make sure your campaigns both look and work great.
- Analyze statistics and modify your content based on that data. Check your best performing campaigns and choose a benchmark email for further campaigns.
- Don’t be afraid to experiment. It’s good to refresh your templates every now and then and remember about maintaining your fundamental brand graphic elements.
I hope this article will help you with using email marketing for your NGO/Non-profit organization and please wait for my next blog to cover how to run the email marketing campaigns and convert your contacts into donors effectively and consistently.
Please take a quick look at the White Paper of TechSoup Polska on how they increased their orders over 1200%
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